EN Escultura-Hablada was an object exhibition in oral format by Eloísa Ejarque and Tiago de Sá. Works from the research project In the Shadow of the Castle moderated a story-telling night where local guest-speakers contributed to convert a public space into a temporary venue, having the research-referent as background. A Sombra do Castelo (In the Shadow of the Castle) designates the phenomenon of social belief based on the state of conservation of the Belalcázar Castle, describing the condition of the architecture of the defensive structure as symptomatic of territorial financial precarity. The title was appropriated for this punctual collaborative action as a referent for considering processes of recovery and decay and their implications on local social identity.
The presentation event, Escultura-Hablada (Spoken-Sculpture), was supported by three props available to the audience and guest speakers. The bench, used by the guest speakers as a sittingpulpit, had been used before as a temporary scaffolding for a collapsed arch in the castle in one of the sculptural exercises developed during our stay. A far, a light focuses on partially illuminating the castle. For this a generator and three large outdoor bulbs were borrowed, in an effort to make the building visible for the event. The motivation for this scenography came from an existing investment on a concrete light tower equipped with seven large bulbs made specially for lighting the castle at night but whose powering expenses were to high for the local government to maintain.
A cotton towel embroided with the image of a hole in the castles’ structure was made in collaboration with a local textile professional and put at the side of a fountain on the temporary venue, for using if in need. During our introductory speech these three elements were announced.

“This night departs from the awareness of a variety of popular narratives around the castle, its part-by-part construction, its non-strategic location, the central role it played on local economy, and ultimately its mythological nature on the current territorial development.
On arrival we were surprised by the intense desire for story-telling that everyone we met had on the subject; the verbal compilation we accessed became the tangible material to display.
We are sitting on a structure that supports our speech and before supported an arch. This arch was about 5 meters tall and it was actually no longer an arch. Our practice here engaged with what seemingly was once part of the buildings’ structure, even if not presently visible. A hole on a wall becomes an agent for dissemination through becoming a line on a cloth. It might be hanging here, its drapes formed by uncountable soft pores. Panamá cotton is almost weightless when compared to sixty one granite stones.
Gasoline powers a generator that enables light from afar.
There was not a lot we could do but a lot more we could say.”